No Class Conflict in Data Breach Settlement Involving Class Members With and Without Economic Injury
By Andrew Glass, Matthew Lowe, and Brandon Dillman
On remand from the Eighth Circuit,[1] the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota recently recertified a data breach settlement class over an objector’s assertion of an intraclass conflict. Specifically, the objector asserted that a conflict existed between class members who purportedly had suffered loss and were guaranteed a payout under the proposed settlement, and those who had not suffered loss and were not guaranteed a payout. See In re Target Customer Data Security Breach Litig., No. 14-2522 (PAM), 2017 WL 2178306 (D. Minn. May 17, 2017). In rejecting the objector’s alleged conflict, the Court emphasized that “the question is not whether there is any potential or theoretical conflict among class members, it is whether class members’ different interests are antagonistic to each other.” Id. at *3.